time-out-ll

The other day when I was at the gym I realized that the cloth I had tossed in my bag to use as a sweat-absorber was a burp rag. I mean, a clean one, but still. It was one of those hankie-sized cloths that come ten to a pack from Babies R Us, and it ...

I was snickering (with you! WITH you!) at some of your comments on my last entry, particularly the poster whose screaming son scared everyone enough to take him to the ER where he eventually ripped an enormous fart -- the apparent source of all his...

For several days my 3-month-old had been channeling his 3-week-old self, in that he re-developed a startling habit of randomly hosing down his entire body and any nearby furniture/parents/passing cats with the contents of his stomach. I had informed...

I am one of those people who thinks it's awful when parents dish out unwanted advice to other parents, or even worse, non-parents, and yet sometimes I can't help myself. The other day I was horrified to find myself telling someone "if there's ONE th...

My 3-month-old has started laughing, or more accurately, chortling. His version of laughing at this stage is much like I remember his brother's: a staccato "ah-heh-heh, ah-heh" sound, accompanied by a delighted grin. The thing that was cracking Dyla...

My toddler got sick this week and it was a feverish sort of malaise-inducing illness that completely erased his normal spirited personality. He was depressed, sunken-eyed, prone to picking random spots on the floor on which to stretch out and whimpe...

My 3-month-old has figured out that the starfish-like things at the end of his arms actually belong to him, and whenever he's not busy destroying our eardrums howling out his various commands ("MORE MILK! ENTERTAIN ME FOR I HAVE BECOME BORED! REMOV...

I really, really cherish the times when I have a chance to escape the house and get out on my own, even if it's only for an hour doing something like poking around our neighborhood thrift store or sipping a coffee at Starbucks. O, freedom! On my way ...

I seem to keep forgetting to take Dylan to his 2-month checkup, for no particular reason other than life is busy and I am stupid. This week has officially become No Good Schedule-Wise so it'll have to be next week at the earliest, at which point he'l...

I don't know if you've noticed this, but being around very small children can make a grown adult act like a capering, idiotic clown. Witness my daily ritual of singing to my 3-month-old at the top of my lungs during a diaper change:
Did you poop, ...

I don't know if I'd call myself an optimist, but I often sail along with a blind sense of it-can't-happen-to-me-ism. Or in the case of my family, it can't happen to us. This allows me to make it through the day without succumbing to a full-body panic...

Dylan, my three-month-old, has been a formula-fed baby from birth, and not that anyone needs an explanation about that but I'll just quickly say it was a couldn't-vs-wouldn't issue. My older boy Riley also had bottle instead of breast, and since I kn...

I just started putting Dylan down in his crib -- in his bedroom -- for daytime naps, which has been a fantastic development. I don't have to tiptoe past his lightly snoring self only to stupidly wake him up with the clatter of the ice dispenser. I ca...

Sometimes I have a hard time believing that I was pregnant just a few months ago. I mean, I know it happened, I've got the baby and the crepe-skin belly to prove it, and yet it's almost like it happened to some other person. Was that really me, the s...

My 2-month-old (I have officially given up counting in weeks because I have to keep checking and re-checking the calendar and doing this absurd thing where I mouthbreath for minutes at a time over whether it's 10 weeks or 11 and then I run out of fin...